


out here the good girls die

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [56]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depressed Peter Parker, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I promise, Kidnapping, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker is a Mess, Presumed Dead, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26760916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: Peter doesn't need reality anymore. He's got fiction.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Spidey-shots, Spidey-shots, now they're done, thanks a lot <3 [56]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1368034
Comments: 44
Kudos: 72
Collections: The Spideychelle Shuffle





	out here the good girls die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coykoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coykoi/gifts).



> Based on the following lyrics from "A Dustland Fairytale" by The Killers:
> 
> _I saw the ending when they turned the page/I threw my money and I ran away_

They gave Peter her books. He hadn’t realized quite how many she’d had. Certain copies had stuck around, but most had rotated in and out of their apartment. Piles used to crop up on the rickety end table next to their couch and then disappear by the next day. He’d open one of their closets—all too narrow and too deep—to find an entire set of encyclopedias on some hyper-specific topic he hadn’t even been aware his girlfriend was interested in. There had been first editions jammed under the bed, gorgeously illustrated hardcovers splayed open on the bathroom floor so she could see them from the tub, a row of scrappy mass-market thrillers in her sock drawer. And still. He hadn’t realized.

Now, Peter sat surrounded by them in towers, misaligned with spines in every colour. He’d kept them inside the boxes her dad brought them in (her mom… hadn’t been able to see him) for weeks before deciding she wouldn’t have wanted that. He had to let her spread out, take the place over, take _him_ over, though the most priceless book in the world was still just a flat little object. Paper and ink. A tree that used to be alive. He sniffed, pretending it was the dust, and flipped to the next page.

He should’ve been doing this years ago, reading fiction. She’d tried to tell him, to sell him on the benefits. All these stories took Peter out of his own head and set him down someplace totally different. He knew more words and could identify more references in the movies he referenced, which was, like, references _meta_. What baffled him was that she’d read all of these. He didn’t know if he’d get through a quarter of them in the decades he had left to live. Unless he didn’t really have that long. Anyone who knew him worried, Peter understood that, but death always seemed to skirt the edges of his life. Whenever it darted in like a viper, it was to strike down someone close to him, never him. He should’ve been used to it.

“I don’t know about that one, MJ,” Peter muttered wryly. To himself.

Setting the book he’d just finished aside, he reached out and whisked the next one off the stack by the bed. It was getting dark in the room, so he turned on the lamp. The exact time didn’t matter. He’d dropped out of his master’s program and didn’t have anyplace else he needed to be. Eventually, Peter knew he would run out of money to keep paying for this apartment, but he’d been stretching it as far as he could, holding on for as long as possible. He knew she wasn’t coming home and still… this had been their home. This was where she’d kept her books and where he’d meant to keep her safe. When those people—enemies he hadn’t even known he’d possessed—had found this place, they’d elected to do something so much worse than taking Peter’s life. They’d taken _her_.

He’d searched. God, had he searched. Way past the day the authorities had gone from labelling her ‘Missing’ to ‘Presumed Dead’. After day after day of nothing, he’d retreated into the last place they were together.

Peter rolled, gripping the book in one hand so he wouldn’t lose his page. He couldn’t waste even a moment backtracking with all of this reading to get through. The sheets smelled pretty rank, though not as bad as the pajamas he’d been wearing for… he’d forgotten how many hours straight.

“Hey, Ned,” he called when he heard his best friend use his key to get into the apartment. “You wanna hand me the dictionary? This asshole author’s already into five-syllable words on page four, can you believe that?”

He felt Ned’s presence in the bedroom doorway. The time when Peter had been ashamed of the state of his living space had passed, so he continued to lie there, reading.

“Peter,” his friend said, tone cautious. “There’s… I… I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, man.” _Flip_.

The bed dipped behind Peter as Ned sat.

“It’s pretty serious.”

“What, they want Spider-Man?” he asked sarcastically. “Tell them he’s not in the game anymore.”

“No… no.”

Ned sounded spooked and, honestly, Peter didn’t have time for that. He tried to block it out, focus harder on the words in front of his face, the texture of the yellowing paper between his fingers.

“ _Peter_ ,” his friend pressed. “They found her.”

Peter went somewhere. His body was there, under the blanket, over the fitted sheet (she’d helped him with those), but Peter was elsewhere for a full minute. He went completely numb, down to his teeth. If he still had a heartbeat, he wasn’t able to hear it.

“They… they found her body,” he forced out, stiff. He was going to choke. Any second and it would catch up with him and he’d need to scramble across the bed to aim his vomit at the floor.

“No. Listen.”

Ned’s hand gripped his upper arm. A shock. Peter had been shying from touch so much that people had eventually stopped trying. He hadn’t had a handshake to spare for his best friend, certainly not one of the tight hugs they’d tugged each other into in the past after miraculous recoveries and close calls.

“The cops can handle it,” Peter said, feeling his stomach heave. “Forensics.” He sat up, but Ned gripped the front of his sweaty white (greyish now) t-shirt with unusual insistence.

“They found _her_. MJ’s alive.”

The numbness leeched away and he grabbed his friend by the shoulders.

“Where is she?”

“Apparently, she’s a little battered. Broken wrist, dehydrated—”

“ _Ned_ ,” Peter sobbed, “where?”

“At the hospital… _Peter, I haven’t told you which hospital_!”

The apartment that had caged him for months couldn’t hold him a second longer. Peter fled, forgetting his page number, forgetting his shoes.


End file.
